good!" came from her in a gasp as he caught the handle. But
when he came splashing back and set it on the rock beside her, it
suddenly lost its importance, and as suddenly she became a prey to
low-voiced, down-looking discomfort. A muttered "thank you," was all
the words she had for him, and she got to her feet with looks directed
to the arrangement of her skirt.

He stood knee-high in the water watching her, glad of her down-drooped
lids, for he could dwell on the bloom that deepened under his eye.

"You haven't learned the force of running water yet," he said. "It can
be very strong sometimes, so strong that a little woman's hand like
yours has no power against it."

"It was because the stick caught in the handle," she muttered, bending
for the pail. "It hurt my fingers."

"You've never guessed that I was called 'Running Water,' have you?"

"You?" she paused with look arrested in sudden interest. "Who calls
you that?"

"Everybody--you. _L'eau courante_ means running water, doesn't it?
That's what you call me."

In the surprise of the revelation she forgot her unease and looked at
him, repeating slowly, "L'eau courante, running water. Why, of course.
But it's like an Indian's name."

"It is an Indian's name. The Blackfeet gave it to me because they said
I could run so fast. They were after me once and a man makes the best
time he can then. It was a fine race and I won it, and after that they
called me, 'The man that goes like Running Water.' The voyageurs and
coureurs des bois put it into their lingo and it stuck."

"But your real name?" she asked, the pail forgotten.

"Just a common French one, Duchesney, Napoleon Duchesney, if you want
to know both ends of it. It was my father's. He was called after the
emperor whom my grandfather knew years ago in France. He and Napoleon
were students together in the military school at Brienne. In the
Revolution they confiscated his lands, and he came out to Louisiana and
never wanted to go back." He splashed to the stone and took up the
bucket.

She stood absorbed in the discovery, her child's mind busy over this
new conception of him as a man whose birth and station had evidently
been so different to the present conditions of his life. When she
spoke her mental attitude was naively displayed.

"Why didn't you tell before?"

He shrugged.

"What was there to tell? The mountain men don't always use their own
names."

The bucket, swayed by the mov